Hassabis: Post-human AGI will discover room-temperature superconductors and new energy sources
Demis Hassabis · Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis: AI's Next Breakthroughs, AGI Timeline, Google's AI Glasses Bet · Jan 23, 2026 · at 32:31
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, discusses with Alex Kantrowitz what will occur when AI models surpass human knowledge to make first-principles scientific breakthroughs like AlphaZero did in games.
0:00 / 0:36exact quote · 36.1s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I mean, that's what to me is, it would be the AGI moment is, you know, then it will discover a new superconductor, room temperature superconductor that's possible in the laws of physics, but we just haven't found that needle in the haystack. Or a new source of energy, a new way to build optimal batteries. I think all of those things will become possible and indeed not just possible. I think they will happen once we get to a system that's first of all got to, you know, human level knowledge, and then there'll be some techniques. Maybe it will have to help invent some of those techniques, but kind of like alpha zero that will allow it to go beyond into new uncharted territory.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Demis Hassabis
Hassabis Predicts True AGI Is Five To Ten Years Away
“I think an AGI system would have to be able to do all of those things to really fulfill the original sort of goal of the AI field. And I think, you know, we're five to 10 years away from that.”
Demis Hassabis Rejects Yann LeCun's Stance That LLMs Are A Dead End
“No matter what camp you're in, we're gonna need Large foundation models as the key component of the final AGI systems. Of that, I'm sure. So, I don't, I'm not subscriber to someone like Jan LeCun who thinks, you know, that there's sort of some kind of dead end…”
Hassabis: AGI Must Mean Matching All Human Cognitive Capabilities
“I don't think AGI should be sort of turned into a marketing term or for commercial gain. I think there is always been a scientific definition of that. My definition of that is a system that that can exhibit all the cognitive capabilities humans can. And I mean…”